


it's quiet. too quiet.

by KathrynShadow



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Background Relationships, Gen, they don't actually make out in this one I'm sorry I've failed you all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-31
Updated: 2013-10-31
Packaged: 2017-12-31 01:20:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1025627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KathrynShadow/pseuds/KathrynShadow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos accidentally adopts a kitten of the non-floating variety.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's quiet. too quiet.

Perhaps the most startling thing Carlos had ever found in Night Vale was Photon.

He found Photon curled up under his lab's front porch steps, shivering a little and looking piteous. She appeared to be a perfectly normal ginger tabby, perhaps a month or so old, with green eyes and a white splotch on her chest. Carlos had sat in front of her for exactly ten minutes and she had not spontaneously sprouted poisonous spikes or begun chanting, and in fact she had just sort of inched up to him and sniffed his knee curiously, so he figured it would probably be safe to pet her.

She purred and leaned into the touch with her whole body, the tip of her tail trembling with delight. So, 80 percent chance she wasn't going to eat him, probably.

Carlos took her inside, telling himself that it was because Night Vale wildlife was usually very tetchy about being observed at all, let alone curling up less than two feet from his front door. He supposed that a _small_ reason was that she looked a bit chilly in the cloudless desert sunrise and there was no harm in letting her warm up a little bit, not really.

So he observed her as thoroughly as possible without doing anything harmful. He learned that she didn't like his printer and enjoyed batting at his seismograph. He learned that bouncing off of walls was her favourite activity and that the spaces under his doors were just wide enough for her to wriggle her tiny body under. He learned that she liked tuna salad.

(He learned that last part when she discovered his half-eaten lunch sitting on one of the counters.)

But the strange part, the _really_ strange part, was the discovery that she appeared to be completely normal. No distortion of physics, no supernatural powers of any kind, not even an arcane rune hidden in the stripes on her coat just for the sheer hell of it.

Clearly she required further observation. And if she wasn't going to be convenient and reveal whatever oddity she had in a lab environment, well, he really just had to take her home with him, didn't he?

\--

Cecil almost squeaked in a gasp, folding his hands over his mouth in delight. "You didn't tell me you got a kitten, Carlos!" he exclaimed, and it kind of felt like the words were sparkling.

Carlos was taken aback. "I didn't get a kitten," he objected. "I found her under my porch and I've been studying her for abnormalities."

Cecil crouched, holding out a couple of spindly fingers to Photon's nose. She delicately leaned forward to give him a polite sniff before getting distracted by a speck of dust on the ceiling. "Oh my god she is the cutest thing I have ever seen oh my god," Cecil said, rocking back on his heels, not seeming to have listened at all.


End file.
